Enraptured (37 page)

She hadn’t realized she was hungry until she
felt the beat of his pulse beneath her mouth. Without meaning to,
her fangs sprang free of their own volition and pressed against his
supple skin. She grabbed hold of his arms in an attempt to steady
and calm herself. With the next beat of his heart, she sank her
fangs into his throat. The surge of his warm, sweet blood filling
her calmed her almost instantly. A breath of relief escaped her as
she melted against him. His arms enveloped her, pulling her flush
against his body.

“Paige,” he murmured.

She could feel the bliss radiating from him
as she fed from him, feel his growing arousal, but he pushed aside
his own baser urges as he sought to comfort her. The way he felt
for her could never be denied, he was completely enraptured with
her; she was everything to him. The edginess, anxiety, and lack of
control she’d been feeling before stepping into this alcove
vanished as his blood, body and mind soothed her.

Her teeth retracted from his neck, her eyes
behind her glasses were back to their normal color when she lifted
her head to look at him. “Feel better?” he inquired.

She flashed him a sensual smile that caused
his dick to jump eagerly. “Much.” She ran her tongue across her
lips to lick away the remnants of his blood. “And more than ready
to get back to our room.”

A low rumble of pleasure escaped him. “You
keep looking at me like that and we won’t make it back to the
room.”

“Promise?”

“Tease,” he muttered.

“Oh, I plan to do much more than just tease
you.”

Paige laughed when a low growl escaped him;
he grabbed hold of her hand and hurriedly led her from the alcove.
Keeping her against his side, he entered the rush of the crowd
again.

Paige’s foot tapped as she watched the floors
lighting up above the elevator doors. She stood against Ian’s side,
taking solace in the overwhelming strength emanating from his body
while she fought the urge to tear his clothes off. They may not
have found her father, but she planned to keep herself pleasantly
distracted from the reality of him lingering out there.

In her mind, she mentally planned exactly
what she was going to do to him. He’d always taken the lead, but
tonight she would keep him at her mercy. As soon as they got back
to their room, she was calling room service and ordering some
strawberries, whip cream, and champagne.

Her heart began to beat faster; she bit on
her bottom lip as her hands dug into his side. Ian’s amusement
tickled her mind, she noticed the others had all become focused on
the doors. Of course, she realized, as vampires they would be able
to sense and smell her heightened desire. A blush crept up her
cheeks, but she found she didn’t care what they knew. All she
wanted was out of this elevator.

The doors
finally
opened with a ding
and the others disembarked with a goodbye and a wave. The doors
slid closed again, and the elevator continued its smooth, upward
ascent. “I can’t wait to get back to the room,” she murmured.

Ian released a small laugh and kissed the
top of her head. “And what do you intend to do there?”

The wicked smile she shot him almost made
him hit the stop button on the elevator, but he’d sensed her
thoughts, and there was no way he was going to put an end to
anything she had planned for the night. He was so ensnared by the
scent of her burgeoning lust that he didn’t pick up on another
aroma until the elevator came to a stop. Before the doors slid
open, he knew something was wrong as the fetid odor of a landfill
washed over him. He sprang forward to try and stop the doors from
opening, but it was already too late.

Paige didn’t have a chance to take a step
forward before Ian grabbed hold of her arm and pushed her behind
him. Thrown off by his rough treatment of her, she barely had time
to recover before her back was slammed into the wall of the
elevator. Her spine screamed in protest as it was shoved
unmercifully into the metal railing running around the interior of
the elevator.

The rough jostling caused her glasses to
fall off. They crunched beneath Ian’s feet as he adjusted his feet
and swung his arm up in a rapid uppercut. Whoever Ian hit, he did
so with so much force that the thunderous crack of bone echoed
through the confining space. The person shot through the air like a
bullet and smashed off the top of the elevator. The roof thrust
upward with a piercing screech of metal that left a concave dent in
the ceiling. Bits of metal, paint and debris floated down around
them, briefly filling the air and blocking out the hotel wall the
open elevator doors had revealed.

It wasn’t until whomever it was plummeted
away from the ceiling and smashed into the floor that Paige
realized it was a man and a vampire. The man remained splayed face
down on the ground, knocked unconscious by Ian’s punch. Ian bent,
grabbed the unconscious vampire by the back of his shirt, and
heaved him out the door with enough force to crack the wall across
from them. Plaster rained down on the man’s unconscious form when
he slumped to the floor.

Paige couldn’t stop herself from gawking
when she realized Ian had hit him violently enough to tear half of
his head from his neck. It flopped to the side to reveal part of
his spine, the muscles, and ligaments severed by the blow. Paige
didn’t know if it had been enough to kill the vampire, but he
remained unmoving as blood poured from the grotesque
mutilation.

She felt far more powerful as a vampire than
she had as a human, still, there was no way she could nearly,
literally,
knock someone’s head off with one punch.

“Stay here!” Ian shouted at her.

Before she could respond, he vanished out
the closing elevator doors. He moved so fast, he never set off the
sensor that would have stopped them from shutting. She gawked after
him, too stunned to move for a second. And then she realized he had
vanished into that hall, where more vampires were probably waiting
for him.

“Ian!” she screamed and raced forward. She
crashed up against the closed doors, leaving a dent in them as the
elevator began to ascend once more.

Her blood pressure rose, heat burned in her
cheeks as a scream of frustration burned her throat. Her fingers
twitched as she fought the urge to claw the metal doors open. She
had no idea what prying them open would get her, other than a
glimpse of the concrete wall shaft and possibly stuck in between
floors while Ian dealt with whatever was going on below. The static
laced, distorted elevator music playing from the dented speaker
above her, made her teeth grate as she fought the urge to rip her
hair out and smash herself against the door again.

A loud bang resonated beneath her. The
entire elevator shaft shook, causing the car to lurch beneath her
feet. Her stomach plummeted; her breath caught in her chest as she
waited for the snapping sound of the cable that would precede the
floor falling out from beneath her feet.

The walls around her made a groaning noise
that caused her heart to leap into her throat. Immortal or not,
plummeting thirty floors to the ground below was not her idea of a
good time. She glanced at the floor beneath her, wishing
immortality had also come with some x-ray vision. What had caused
that bang? Where was Ian?

Heart hammering, she reached out for Ian’s
mind. His bloodlust beat against her, but so did his pain. A scream
tore from her, when she realized he’d been injured. Knowing it was
useless, she still flung herself at the horrible doors blocking her
way. The sounds coming from her were anything but human; she felt
like a Tasmanian Devil on a rampage as she clawed at the doors. She
didn’t care if it was a concrete wall across from her, she’d tear
it apart with her bare hands if she had to.

Then, with a peaceful sounding ding
completely out place with this situation, the doors opened to
reveal the hushed hallway beyond. She stepped into the peaceful
Twilight Zone of this floor, while below chaos and death reigned
supreme. It all seemed so strange that she half expected someone to
hand her a cup of tea.

She didn’t bother trying to go down in the
elevator again, but fled down the hall. She barreled past a
startled woman who had as much clothes on as a newborn, and was
jerking at the knob of her locked hotel room. Paige kept her head
turned away from the woman as she banged into the stairwell door
and flung it open.

The heavy metal door smashed against the
wall, shattering plaster and twisting the door’s hinges. She leapt
down the first flight of stairs without touching a single step. Her
feet hit the floor; her forward momentum caused her to slam off the
wall and bounce toward the next stairwell. Grabbing hold of the
banister, she took another staggering step before regaining her
balance.

Terror for Ian drove her to preternatural
speeds she’d never imagined attaining. She leapt over the banister
and landed noiselessly on the landing below. Stumbling to the door,
she fumbled at the knob as another resounding crash shook the
building. Screams of frightened humans echoed down the hallway.
Ian’s agony lanced through her skull, temporarily blinding her with
the white light exploding in her head that accompanied it.
Unwilling to be deterred, she flung the door open and bounded into
the hallway.

She came to an abrupt halt when she spotted
the disarray and destruction everywhere. Across from her, the
elevator doors had caved in to the point she could see across the
shaft to the concrete wall on the other side. Blood smeared the
silver doors that repeatedly dinged as if they were opening and
closing. The body of a headless vampire was propped against the
doors, she recognized the bloodstained blue shirt of the man who
had first rushed them. Having his head hanging half off must not
have been enough to kill him, but Ian had finished the job. She had
no idea where his head was, but she had a feeling if she looked
down the elevator shaft she would find it.

A door down the hall cracked open, an eye
pressed against the slit. “Run,” the woman whispered before
slamming the door closed again. The locks of the woman’s room
sliding into place echoed in the hall.

That was helpful,
Paige mused as she
surveyed the blood stained carnage of the hall. Two more bodies
littered the floor with one missing his heart. The other had a
giant piece of wood, from a broken hall table, shoved through his
chest. The scent of the blood caused her fangs to tingle as she
stared up and down the strangely tranquil hallway.

Where the hell was Ian? She wondered as she
examined the closed doors lining the hallway. She could feel him
nearby; his mind brushed against hers as she moved down the hall in
search of him and the vampires she knew he battled. She may not
have any sort of instinctual pull to her piece of shit father, but
she could feel the incessant pull of Ian. The sound of crashes and
bangs shook the walls and made the floor shake beneath her feet,
but all of the different rooms made it difficult to pinpoint where
Ian and the others were.

Another door creaked open at the other end
of the hall, before closing again. A woman began to scream
incessantly from one of the rooms at the end closest to her. In
this area, some of the doors along the hall had been shattered to
reveal the rooms beyond, but she didn’t go for one of those.

Instead, she stopped at a closed door,
lifted her foot and smashed it into the door. Panic, and her
enhanced abilities, made her far stronger than she’d realized. Wood
splintered and flew straight back into the room, tearing out part
of the doorframe with it. The half-dressed woman within the room
screamed, a man threw himself behind a couch. Paige snagged a
broken piece of wood off the floor as she ran through the sitting
room to the bedroom beyond.

Blood splattered the room; the glass of the
balcony doors had exploded outward to allow the hot desert air to
blow in. The breeze ruffled the curtains causing their blood coated
bottoms to flutter into the room. She ran through the bathroom and
smashed into the door adjoining the room beyond. The door gave way
far easier than she’d anticipated. She stumbled and almost fall to
the floor, but her instincts helped her to catch herself in
time.

Straightening herself, she spun to the sound
of a fist pummeling flesh. Finally, blessedly, her eyes landed on
Ian fending off three vampires at once. His golden hair had become
a crimson color; blood dripped from it to splatter onto the bed he
stood upon. The jagged tear marring his cheek was so deep she could
see the white glint of his cheekbone beneath and some of his upper
teeth. His skin had taken on the devilish, reddish-black hue she’d
seen before. The whites of his eyes had veins of red leading into
the vivid ruby colored centers of them.

One of the vampires he fought took a
staggering step away from him when Ian focused on him. Ian swung
out with his arm, caught the vamp under the chin, and snapped his
head back with enough force to knock the vampire on his ass.
Another vampire swung out and sliced Ian’s side open, spilling his
blood and revealing his ribs beneath.

A shout of rage escaped her. Adjusting her
hold on her makeshift stake, she leapt forward to tear into one of
the vampires attacking him. A blur of motion drew her attention to
the left a second before something hit her in the side with the
force of a charging bull. The cracking of her ribs reverberated
through the room before she was smashed into the wall. White
plaster rained down around her; it coated her lashes to the point
where she couldn’t see for a few seconds. Agony lanced through her
side; she tried to inhale, but the broken pieces of her ribs
scraping together inside of her left lung made it impossible for
her to draw a deep breath.